The great renaming: what happened to Eth2?

Ethereum is a protocol present process important adjustments. Shopper groups are upgrading the protocol to scale to fulfill international demand whereas enhancing safety and decentralization. Past protocol growth, a essential shift in Ethereum has been the motion away from ‘Eth1’ and ‘Eth2’ terminology. As of late 2021, core developers stopped using the terminology, preferring ‘execution layer’ and ‘consensus layer’, respectively. At this time, as highlighted in our Q1 roadmap, ethereum.org makes the identical shift.

Eth1 → execution layer
Eth2 → consensus layer
Execution layer + consensus layer = Ethereum

Let’s discover why.

Tl;dr;

The phrases Eth1 and Eth2 (Ethereum 2.0) are being phased out
Execution layer (Eth1) and consensus layer (Eth2) are the brand new terminologies
The roadmap to scale Ethereum in a decentralized means stays the identical
You don’t have to do something

The place did Ethereum 2.0 come from?

Ethereum all the time had, as a part of its roadmap, plans to scale the network in a decentralized way and to transition to proof-of-stake. Early on, researchers labored on these efforts individually, however round 2018 they have been combined into a single roadmap under the “Ethereum 2.0” umbrella.

As a part of that roadmap, the prevailing proof-of-work chain (Eth1) would ultimately be deprecated by way of the issue bomb. Customers & functions would migrate to a brand new, proof-of-stake Ethereum chain, often known as Eth2.

The article The Roadmap to Serenity by ConsenSys explains how issues stood as of early 2019.

What modified?

As work started on the Beacon Chain, it grew to become clear that the phased Ethereum 2.0 roadmap would take a number of years to ship totally. This led to a revival of analysis initiatives on the proof-of-work chain resembling Stateless Ethereum, a paradigm that might take away the untouched state from the community to sure its development price.

The elevated concentrate on making the proof-of-work chain long-term sustainable paired with the conclusion that the Beacon Chain could be prepared a lot sooner than different parts of the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap led to an “Early Merge” proposal. This proposal would launch the prevailing EVM chain as “Shard 0” of the Ethereum 2.0 system. Not solely would this expedite the transfer to proof-of-stake, however it will additionally make for a a lot smoother transition for functions, because the transfer to proof-of-stake might occur with none migration on their finish.

Shortly after this proposal, Danny Ryan explored how we might accomplish this by leveraging the prevailing Eth1 purchasers in his Eth1+Eth2 client relationship publish. This may massively cut back the event work required to ship a post-merge system and leverage present purchasers, which had been battle-tested for years on Mainnet. Across the identical time, research on rollups as a viable and safe solution to scale Ethereum proved promising. As an alternative of ready on a posh, unsure scaling resolution years away, we might shift the main focus in direction of scaling by way of rollups as a substitute of sharded execution.

Wish to dive deeper? Take a look at Danny Ryan’s “Eth1 + Eth2 = Ethereum” ETHGlobal presentation.

Why can’t we simply use Eth2?

Psychological fashions

One main drawback with the Eth2 branding is that it creates a damaged psychological mannequin for brand spanking new customers of Ethereum. They intuitively assume that Eth1 comes first and Eth2 comes after. Or that Eth1 ceases to exist as soon as Eth2 exists. Neither of those is true. By eradicating Eth2 terminology, we save all future customers from navigating this complicated psychological mannequin.

Inclusivity

Because the roadmap for Ethereum has advanced, Ethereum 2.0 has turn into an inaccurate illustration of Ethereum’s roadmap. Being cautious and correct in our phrase alternative permits content material on Ethereum to be understood by the broadest viewers doable.

Rip-off prevention

Sadly, malicious actors have tried to make use of the Eth2 misnomer to rip-off customers by telling them to swap their ETH for ‘ETH2’ tokens or that they have to by some means migrate their ETH earlier than the Eth2 improve.

We hope this up to date terminology will carry readability to remove this rip-off vector and assist make the ecosystem safer.

Staking readability

Some staking operators have additionally represented ETH staked on the Beacon Chain with the ‘ETH2’ ticker. This creates potential confusion, provided that customers of those providers aren’t really receiving an ‘ETH2’ token. No ‘ETH2’ token exists; it merely represents their share in that particular suppliers’ stake.

How does this replace change the Ethereum roadmap?

It doesn’t! It’s essential to know that this renaming represents a change in naming solely. The options on Ethereum’s present roadmap (i.e. the merge, sharding) and future options will nonetheless occur on the identical timeline. More on the Ethereum upgrades.

Content material adjustments

ethereum.org

Our ‘Eth2’ sources (ethereum.org/en/eth2) are actually our ‘Ethereum upgrades’ part
Particular person options are actually known as ‘upgrades’
All pages beforehand discussing Eth2 have been up to date, with explanations included the place applicable

The rebrand was an enormous process with many content material adjustments. There are possible cases we missed and enhancements nonetheless to be made. Discover one thing that wants fixing? Raise an issue or open a PR on the ethereum.org GitHub.

Staking Launchpad

Replace February 1, 2022

As a part of the good renaming, we have additionally up to date the Ethereum Staking Launchpad (previously often known as the Eth2 Launchpad) to replicate the terminology adjustments. Please raise an issue or create a PR if we missed anything.

Content material translations

For those who’re able to translating content material, we might use your assist! We’ve up to date this content material in English, however our 40+ extra languages are actually outdated and nonetheless reference Eth2 terminology. Please contemplate getting concerned.

We’ve up to date our content buckets to incorporate an Ethereum upgrades bucket. It will empower our a whole bunch of lively contributors to the Translation Program to instantly goal these adjustments to publish the brand new correct data throughout languages extra shortly.

Thinking about serving to to translate ethereum.org or the Ethereum Staking Launchpad? Take a look at our translation program.

A ultimate word

To many, ethereum.org is seen as a reputable supply of knowledge maintained by our neighborhood. Understandably, many didn’t need to shift away from Eth2 terminology till ethereum.org did. We hope that our adjustments will encourage others to maneuver away from the outdated Eth2 terminology. By doing so, you’ll be serving to to create consistency and readability throughout the ecosystem, permitting for extra correct psychological fashions and making Ethereum extra accessible.